More Trump Cabinet picks making the rounds with senators

President-elect Donald Trump said Monday that he plans to travel to Paris on Saturday for the reopening of Notre Dame, after the cathedral was damaged in 2019 by a fire. It will be Trump’s first international trip as president-elect.

“It is an honor to announce that I will be traveling to Paris, France, on Saturday to attend the re-opening of the Magnificent and Historic Notre Dame Cathedral, which has been fully restored after a devastating fire five years ago,” Trump wrote on the social media site Truth Social. “President Emmanuel Macron has done a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so. It will be a very special day for all!”

Almost a month after winning her bid for the U.S. Senate, Angela Alsobrooks formally resigned Monday as Prince George’s County executive — setting the stage for a pair of special elections to fill her job and, potentially, more special elections if one of the county officials vying for the spot wins.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who sits on the Armed Services Committee, did not express outward support for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Defense, after being asked on Monday about reports on several allegations Hegseth faces.

SACRAMENTO — As California lawmakers opened a special session focused on launching a multimillion-dollar legal fund to combat President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to withhold funding, revoke the state’s ability to set strict pollution standards and carry out mass deportations, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said the state is ready to hold the incoming leader to account and protect Californians from his potential moves.

Republican senators appeared open Monday to President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to name loyalist Kash Patel as FBI director, despite concerns that the appointment could undermine the agency’s independence.

As Election Day 2022 approached, elections officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, were grappling with an unanticipated problem. Voters returning ballots to official drop boxes were being harassed and confronted. In one incident, men dressed in tactical gear were stationed near a drop box in Mesa.

There was an obvious trigger for the pattern: the release earlier that year of the film “2000 Mules.”

Pete Hegseth — president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense and who has drawn scrutiny over allegations of sexual assault — was back on Capitol Hill on Monday.

He met with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) as he continues to seek the support of Senate Republicans ahead of what will probably be a closely scrutinized confirmation process.

LUANDA, Angola — President Joe Biden arrived Monday in the African nation of Angola, a visit rife with symbolic importance and practical goals that marks one of the last foreign trips of his presidency and a closing moment in a 50-year public career that has focused frequently on foreign policy.

It’s one thing for a president to pardon his son. It’s another to do it like this.

President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, on Sunday is exceptional not just because of the pardon’s recipient — the closest family member to receive a pardon in history — but also for its sheer breadth, according to experts on presidential pardons.

Less than a day after President Joe Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his lone surviving son, Hunter Biden, President-elect Donald Trump’s team sent a fundraising email to supporters to raise cash, calling the pardon the “sweet heart deal of the century.”

“Do you remember when Biden said he would never pardon Hunter? That was a lie!” the text read, leading to a fundraising page that described the act, in all-caps, as a “miscarriage of justice.”

President Joe Biden faced mounting criticism Monday for his decision to issue a sweeping pardon of his son, with a number of Democrats expressing concern that it would undercut faith in the justice system and provide ammunition to President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to remake it.

In the hours after Biden’s announcement, several Democrats said that while they understood his decision on a personal level to protect his son Hunter, they also worried about the broader signal the pardon sends.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) announced Monday that he will run to be the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee — mounting a direct challenge to Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York), who has served as the panel’s top Democrat since 2017.

President-elect Donald Trump warned that “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East” if hostages in the region are not released by the time he takes office.

Trump complained in a Truth Social posting on Monday afternoon that “everybody is talking about the hostages” but taking “no action” and vowed to take nonspecific action in the Middle East and against the hostages’ captors. He did not specify that he was referring to Hamas.

There’s not much question that the primary reason President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Kash Patel to run the FBI is that Patel is a fervent champion of Trump’s FBI-hostile worldview.

SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers are returning to the Capitol here Monday to open an emergency special session aimed at establishing a multimillion-dollar legal fund to combat the incoming Trump administration with an expected barrage of lawsuits.

First lady Jill Biden said Monday she supports her husband’s pardon of Hunter Biden.

“Of course I support the pardon of my son,” she said when asked about the matter by a reporter at a Christmas decorations event with National Guard families.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) are scheduled to meet Monday afternoon with Pam Bondi, whom President-elect Donald Trump has announced will be his nominee for attorney general. Grassley’s and Graham’s offices announced the meetings with Bondi, a former state attorney general in Florida.

MEXICO CITY — Your favorite Mexican beer may get more expensive, if President-elect Donald Trump carries out his threat to impose tariffs on Mexico.

Trump said last week he would slap a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada if they didn’t stop the flow of migrants and the deadly opioid fentanyl over their borders. Such penalties would cause real pain to those countries, which are the top two U.S. trade partners. But American consumers would be hurt, too, according to economists.

Karoline Leavitt, President-elect Donald Trump’s spokeswoman and his pick for White House press secretary, deleted two social media posts that praised then-Vice President Mike Pence and a U.S. Capitol Police officer after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, according to CNN.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Arizona) will no longer seek another term atop the House Natural Resources Committee, a decision that comes as House Democrats are pressuring elder statesmen to step aside from their committee posts.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that President Joe Biden decided to pardon his son over the weekend after believing that Hunter Biden had been politically prosecuted — but she stressed that Biden continues to have faith in the Justice Department.

“Two things can be true,” she told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday. “The president does believe in the justice system and the Department of Justice. And he also believes that his son was singled out politically.”

While controversy over presidential pardons has a long history — from George Washington absolving instigators of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1795 to Gerald Ford pardoning Richard M. Nixon after the Watergate scandal forced his resignation — few have used the constitutionally vested power to pardon family members.

President Joe Biden expressed devastation and outrage in a statement Monday after the Israel Defense Forces confirmed that American citizen Omer Neutra was killed during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Hamas had held his body since then.

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Just down the road from the Mar-a-Lago estate where Donald Trump was assembling his Cabinet, local officials last month held their own high-stakes discussion: What to do about the traffic?

“Could we do a state of emergency?” asked one member of the Town Council. “Because this is.”

Welcome to lame duck December. The outgoing Congress and president have the daunting task of tackling must-pass and want-to-pass measures before a new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.

As they finish up the year, returning members are also grappling with the fast-paced and sometimes controversial picks President-elect Donald Trump is announcing for his Cabinet and other top Senate-confirmed positions.

WATERBURY, Conn. — Eight years ago, Tomas Olivo’s biggest disappointment with Democrats was that he could not cast a ballot for Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, as the party nominated Hillary Clinton instead. But recently, Olivo’s list of gripes with the party has grown, particularly when he pays his property taxes, fills his gas tank or winces at his receipt during what are now solo trips to the grocery store.

President-elect Donald Trump dined with Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday night at his golf course in West Palm Beach, further rekindling a close friendship between the two men following a period of tension.

Trump and Sara Netanyahu, who is in Florida as her husband prepares to stand trial on public corruption charges this month, smiled together in a photo posted by Trump’s communications director.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) advised Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota), the incoming Republican Senate leader, to work with Democrats during the process to confirm Trump’s Cabinet appointees and said he’s committed to “working in a bipartisan fashion.”

Thune previously warned that he would not allow “Democrats to obstruct or block President Trump and the will of the American people” during the confirmation process.

In a 2019 production of his eponymous show, Mehmet Oz extolled the transformational results of Ozempic in an interview with comedian Billy Gardell about managing his Type 2 diabetes — and shedding 21 pounds after five months on the medication.

“Whoa! Now we’re talking!” Oz said as he double high-fived Gardell before turning to a drug company representative to explain the results.

The Biden administration Monday is set to announce a long-anticipated round of restrictions on exports of semiconductor chips and chipmaking equipment to China in one of its last salvos aimed at slowing Beijing’s pursuit of self-reliance in a key national-security realm: advanced chip technology.

Attorney General Merrick Garland and top Justice Department officials are encouraging career staffers to remain in their jobs through the next administration, stressing that institutional knowledge is important as a new leaders take hold, according to people familiar with those conversations.

President-elect Donald Trump raised pardoning his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son Hunter on Sunday night.

Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, is the latest entrant in the race to lead the Democratic National Committee after a devastating presidential campaign for the party.

In an announcement video released Sunday, he touted making progress for Democrats in his battleground state despite national headwinds in last month’s election. He also said Democrats need a “nationwide permanent campaign.”

For 60 years, U.S. evangelicals have focused money, prayers and political heft on an alliance with Israel, driven by what they say is a command from God to protect the Jewish state.

That evangelical project has reached its pinnacle with the planned appointment of one of their own, Mike Huckabee, as ambassador to Israel.

President Joe Biden is traveling to Angola on Monday. He had promised to visit Africa during his presidency and is making the trip in his final full month in office. He is the first U.S. president to visit the continent since Barack Obama in 2015.

Angola has become a close U.S. ally as China invests heavily on the continent and Russia tries to deepen its relationships with African nations.

The Biden administration is engaged in an 11th-hour scramble to provide Ukraine with billions of dollars in additional weaponry, a massive effort that is generating concerns internally about its potential to erode U.S. stockpiles and sap resources from other flash points, officials said.

President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that he would nominate Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman and the father-in-law of his daughter Tiffany, as a senior adviser covering Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.

Trump has been keeping many family members in his inner circle. On Saturday, Trump announced he had tapped Charles Kushner, a New Jersey real estate developer and father-in-law to his daughter Ivanka, to be the ambassador to France.

President Joe Biden on Sunday issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son Hunter, a controversial decision that reverses his long-standing pledge not to use his presidential powers to protect his only surviving son, who was found guilty of gun-related charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax evasion in California.

Using his executive authority in the waning days of his presidency, Biden lifted the legal cloud that has hung over his son for several years.

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants to replace FBI Director Christopher A. Wray with Kash Patel, a staunch loyalist who has vowed to fire the agency’s leadership and dramatically reshape its mission, was met with bipartisan concern that his appointment could undermine the agency’s independence.